UNDER CONSTRUCTION… WORKING ON IT…
Click On the Series Title Below to Go to the Novel or Story Series You Would Like More Information About.
— Bryant Street
All Short Stories
— Buckey the Space Pirate
All Short Stories
— Cold Poker Gang
Calling Dead
Cold Call
Kill Game
Dead Hand (coming soon)
And some short stories…
— Doc Hill
Dead Money
And some short stories…
— Earth Protection League
Life of a Dream
And some short stories…
— Ghost of a Chance
Heaven Painted as a Poker Chip
Heaven Painted as a Christmas Gift
Heaven Painted as a Free Meal
Heaven Painted as a Cop Car
And some short stories…
— Jukebox Stories
All Short Stories
(Melody Ridge in the Thunder Mountain series)
— Pilgrim Hugh Incidents
All Short Stories
— Poker Boy
Mostly Short Stories plus
The Slots of Saturn
— The Seeder’s Universe
Against Time
Morning Song
Sector Justice
The High Edge
Star Mist
Star Rain (coming soon)
And some short stories.
— Smith’s Monthly Magazine
See full list of all novels and short stories
— Thunder Mountain
Thunder Mountain
Monumental Summit
Avalanche Creek
The Edwards Mansion
Lake Roosevelt
Warm Springs
Melody Ridge
Grapevine Springs (coming soon)
And some short stories
Russell, over and over I have said the exact same thing. Only write for your own pleasure and what you are passionate about. Chasing the market game is just a fools-game. If you write your own stuff, the market will find you. If you mean I wrote to an audience with Trek or Spider-Man or Men in Black, well I am a major fan of all of those (You should see my stores.) I was passionate about all three and still am. I loved all three and still do. I wrote to my passion, my love, what excited me. With those, I was just lucky to be hired to write the books.
Your no sales have nothing to do with anything about choice of what you are writing. No sales mean a whole bunch of things completely unrelated.
— Bad covers… or good covers that don’t relay your stories.
— Bad blurbs… boring, too much plot, wrong blurb for what you have written.
— Not knowing what you have written, therefore you put it in the wrong spot.
— Craft issues, meaning you need to keep writing and learning and learn how to hold a reader down in depth in your story from the start.
–And the number one reason… You don’t have enough product out to even start discoverability.
So stop worrying about what a bunch of beginners are saying. Write to passion. Write for love. The rest will follow in time if you keep working to become a better storyteller.
edit… I went and looked at your books. Good covers, but couldn’t tell what they were. Blurbs were decent. But your worst problem is if those are novels, you are selling them into the discount bin at those prices. No thriller reader will pay attention to a book priced in the discount bin. Can’t be good is how the thinking goes.
So you silly low pricing and giving stuff away for free is killing your writing and books. Get your books priced for the genre they are in and you will start finding readers if you really wrote thrillers, meaning the pacing never stops. If you wrote Hitchcock old-style thrillers, those are marketed under another name. They look suspense, not thriller. Might sell more there with higher prices and kill the thriller talk. Just a few ideas.
To Dean Wesley Smith:
I just now discovered you. Read your blog on killing those sacred cows of publishing. I was a believer of all the myths you listed thereon. So I simplysaid I would have to publish e-books (short stories) to bypass the impossible route of traditional publishing.
I was blown away by all the information you shared with us. Let me tell you where I stand. My first problem is lack of self confidence. I was afraid of rejection. Actually, that;’s not my main problem. It’s just that I was lost in the sense that I didn’t even know who to send my short stories to. I would have actually been glad to receive rejections, if I even tried to send it to a publisher. I want the names of places where I can send off my stdories. After reading your post, new horizons were opened to me.
But I’m back to square A actually. Yes, there are publishers there (even just for rejecting me). But who are thry?
I wrote out of my “passion” or what interested me most. I wrote about love stories, whether based in real life (changed names) or pure fiction. I had this vague dream that someday I’d do more and really get published regularaly, maybe even make a living. All I wanted was to supplement my income, especially now that I have to retire.
So, Mr. Smith, will you please give me a few names to send my short stories on love?
Something concrete to start with
Thank you so very much.
Yours sincerely,
Mila Guieb
Mila,
The key is just going on Google and searching for Short Story Markets. It will depend on what you are writing. How to sort out all the hundreds or thousands you will find is pretty simple: Do they pay over 5 cents per word. In Science Fiction there are numbers of those, including Asimov’s, Analog, Lightspeed, Clarkesworld, and so on. In mystery there are numbers as well, including the top two, Ellery Queen and Hitchcock’s. There is a new one in romance as well and many magazines that publish all sorts of stories outside of genre, from Glimmer Train and on down.
The key is Google and then find some web sites that have listings. Then go to each magazine’s web site and just follow their instructions on how to submit.
Also, in this new world, you can indie publish your stories straight to the readers by getting them on Amazon, B&N, Kobo, D2D and so on. Again, look up articles on how to do that.
Good luck and have fun.